On March 28, 2013, United States District Judge Denise Page Hood granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss the lawsuit Deborah Jarvis filed against Cooper, Walton, Bouchard, McCabe, O’Dell, Powell, Robertson and Oakland County and the state police. Judge Page Hood also denied Jarvis’ motion to dismiss and motion for equitable relief, thereby dismissing the lawsuit. https://casetext.com/case/jarvis-v-cooper.

The court found that Cooper and Walton were not entitled to absolute immunity. The court also found that the Oakland County Defendants, with the exception of Defendant Oakland County, and the Michigan State Defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. The court went on to explain that even if the Oakland County Defendants and the Michigan State Defendants were not entitled to immunity, the complaint failed to state a claim for relief. The court’s finding that of failure to state a claim meant the case could not survive a motion to dismiss.

No where does the court find that the filing was “frivolous” or “ludicrous,” nor were attorney fees imposed upon the plaintiff for such a filing. Interestingly, the court also stated:

On July 13, 2011, Prosecutor Cooper convened the first grand jury in approximately 35 years to investigate the case. At the request of Prosecutor Cooper, the Wayne County Prosecutor convened a grand jury two days later.

I wonder where the court got the idea that Kym Worthy convened a one-man grand jury on July 15, 2011, at the request of Jessica Cooper?

It really helps to compare the actual court opinion to the media coverage of the suit dismissal to get an idea of how misrepresentations from the prosecutor’s office can color reporters’ and then the public’s perception of a lawsuit. See https://www.candgnews.com/news/judge-tosses-100-million-oakland-county-child-killer-case.

A full six months before the federal district judge issued her decision in the case, the smarmy OCP chief deputy Paul Walton filed an attorney grievance against Deborah Jarvis’ attorney, Paul Hughes. In this grievance, it appeared Walton was attempting to litigate issues that, if he was truly concerned, should have been presented to the federal district court; namely, filing a frivolous lawsuit and unfair pre-trial publicity.

Here is the response Mr. Hughes filed with the Michigan State Bar Attorney Grievance Commission (highlights and annotations are mine):

Would love to see that appendix Walton took the time to put together for this intimidation tactic disguised as an attorney grievance. But of course all that stuff is secret, just how the Grievance Commission likes it.

So the lesson is, don’t make a stink or you will end up before an Oakland County judge on fake charges of violating grand jury secrecy rules like Barry King, or answering a bogus grievance charge like Paul Hughes if you represent somebody making a stink, or maybe every male member of your family will get shaken down for DNA samples, with no explanation whatsoever. (Perhaps regarding a Y-str sample that still sits somewhere nine years later.) THAT’S how the game gets played in Oakland County.

I wonder how the Grievance Commission would react to a grievance concerning the thwarting of FOIA laws by offloading files to the Oakland County Sheriff’s office for “safe keeping”? Or the shredding of documents thought to be related to the OCCK case at the prosecutor’s office in the days after the general election last November? Ludicrous, isn’t it?